I am an animal lover, I love ALL animals.

As a photographer, I especially love birds. I can go outside, any day of the year, and take a picture of a bird. I can't do that with any other wild animals.

And as an individual, I have a special place in my heart for Corvidae: Crows and Jays. They are smart and they have a sense of humor.

Crows are common in my city. We also have a good population of scrub jays. The Steller jays are more shy. Ravens live outside the city; I've never seen one.

Since Crows are common, I often photograph them. And since I like them so much, I often turn my photographs into a postcard. This is one of my favorites from last year.

(um, yeah, all my postcards are "one of my favorites". that's why I turn them into postcards!)

This photo also included a wonderful story. Here's what I wrote on the back of the postcard...

This crow is one of four crows who have hung out near our home all year. They are a family: Mom and Dad raising a baby with help from last year's child. The baby yelled a lot thru the summer. He or she finally learned some manners tho, and it's much quieter around here now! (But maybe I miss their noise:))

At the end of the summer, I was delighted to see Baby learning to fly. And being shown the nearest and easiest food source (my neighbor who feeds the squirrels nuts!) and this is how you open a peanut shell. It was wonderful.

And I wondered if the crows would come back next year.

Well, I think they may have returned!

I was sitting on my bed, reading my book, when motion in the bare oak tree outside caught my attention. There was a crow... and another one further away... strange behavior. I had to watch them both for several minutes to figure out what they were doing.

Gathering sticks!! They would hop out to the end of the branch and test the twigs.

*yank, yank* move on, *yank* "Oh Hey! I got one!" Re-arrange for easy carrying (in the beak). "Oh wait, is this twig better? Hmmm..."

And then they would carry the twig to the top of a big, nearby spruce tree.

I definitely saw three crows gathering sticks... most likely last year's baby is helping this year. This is a normal crow family practice. (I'm assuming this is still the original Mom and Dad!)

But I do wonder about the sibling that helped out in 2012... Is s/he starting their own family this year? I hope so. How far away are they? Still close by? I hope so!

Static8 > Journal > Archive > 6 apr 2013 Entry

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